Travels with Hayley

Up and out today at 6.45 for a walk, hoping to ease yesterday’s aches and pains! Meandered up the road avoiding the potholes and mad moped riders, people watching and taking photos of all the fascinating sights. I bought a couple of things at the bakery – what turned out to be a very boring bread with raisins and something called California floss which was like a very soft sponge pocket filled with artificial cream and what may or may not have been dried pork on the top! I tried them later on and then foisted the rest onto Kom our leader and Luigi from South Norwood, both of whom seem very happy to eat anything I produce in front of them so are very useful indeed!

Popped back to the hotel to grab Sarah and we went to the temple to try and see the monks come out – as I left in the tuk tuk yesterday I had caught a glimpse of a stream of them piling out of the temple and into a bus and wanted to get a better look.

Sadly it appears it was a Sunday only thing as apart from one who seemed much more interested in his iPhone, it was a monk free zone! We headed back to the hotel via the coffee cart (I’m back off coffee – that stuff lingers in your mouth for the entire day, it’s awful, how do people drink it regularly?!) and jumped in the mini bus for 8am to head to the genocide museum.

The museum is housed in what was one of the prisons during Pol Pot’s regime. Unfortunately we had another local guide who took us around who was dreadful – very monotone and detail orientated – he spent a good 5 minutes for example explaining that you could tell by the shape of the prisoners name tags what year they were admitted, rather than the details of the atrocoities themselves. More and more of the group drifted away and just walked around ourselves so I didn’t learn as much as I’d hoped.

Of the 20,000 people that went through the prison, only 7 adults and 4 children survived. Unbelievably, 1 of each of them was there on the site, selling books about their experience. Imagine coming back every day to the place you were tortured? Incredible.

One piece of information I did learn and thought was very interesting was 99% of the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge were aged 12-17 which I think explains a lot – it must have been like Lord of the Flies. The statistics are insane, depending on who you spoke to, somewhere between 20-25% of the population of the entire country was killed in the space of 4 years. It’s mind blowing, almost unfathomable.

Back on the bus to the killing fields, prisoners were transferred here from the prison to be killed in their thousands. I ditched the rubbish tour guide at this point and paid the $3 for the audio tour instead which was a really good investment. The next bit is upsetting so if you don’t want to read it, skip the next 2 paragraphs.

There were 400 killing fields across Cambodia, people were killed for various ‘crimes’ such as speaking a foreign language, having soft hands and being educated. Pol Pot’s slogan was better to kill an innocent by mistake than let an enemy go by mistake. The regime was overturned in 1979, so 45 years since anyone was buried there. Still to this day, clothes and bone fragments of the people buried there come to the surface and have to be cleared from the site every few months – they say the spirits that were murdered there cannot rest still.

Almost 9,000 corpses were found in this field alone including a mass grave with 166 headless corpses and one with 100 naked women, children and babies with their skulls smashed in. The information kept literally stopping me in my tracks, it was dreadful and I’ve spared you the very worst of the details to be honest. In 1988 the government built a memorial stoupa on the site where the skulls and some of the bones of the deceased found there now lie – there are 17 stories full of bones and many, many more that wouldn’t fit in there.

A very, very sobering morning and shockingly we found out, they still don’t teach this part of history in Cambodian schools – how can that be?! Truly shocking.

We went for lunch after the fields, I had the most delicious mango and passion fruit smoothie and a green mango salad with dried shrimp which was so light and refreshing which was lovely as it was so humid.

We headed back to the hotel for a 2 hour break where I planned to sit by the pool and catch up on blog writing. But of course, as soon as I sat down there was a local guy sitting 2 sun loungers down on his break from work, visiting his friend the bar maid and we got to chatting and that was 90 minutes gone! He was very sweet, a political researcher called Visa (that’s what foreigners call him, they can’t pronounce his real name – apparently!) and he insisted on buying me a Diet Coke and we chatted about all sorts of things including Brexit! He’s interested in become a blogger and I told him about this one – hi Visa if you’re reading!

3pm and we all met in reception for our cyclo tour. This wasn’t a bike tour as I had thought (dreaded…) someone else rode the bike and you sat in a bath chair thing at the front! It’s a company set up to help mainly homeless people who do the riding and Intrepid like to support it – if they hadn’t sanctioned it I would never have done it as it feels quite exploitative but Intepid really do their homework so I had to trust them.

As well as guilt for making this poor skinny man cycle my bulk all over the city, the main feeling was embarrassment 😂 It’s probably the most ridiculously touristy thing I’ve ever done, you feel like such a plonker! You just have to throw yourself into it though and laugh through the ridicule I’m sure every local person was throwing at us!

You would think that these contraptions would stick to the side roads but no no, we went around the biggest roundabout I’ve ever seen in my life, cutting straight across beeping cars, tuk tuks, motorbikes etc, it was insane. We pulled in after the roundabout to have a quick history lesson from Kom and at that point the police turned up and shut down all the traffic – 2 minutes later the prime minister’s car appeared from his office just down the road and swept through with at least a dozen escorts. Apparently this happens every day around 3.30pm as this is what time he heads home – half a day Harry eh!

In the middle of this roundabout is a huge monument that was built in the 1960’s to celebrate Cambodia’s independence from France. Every 9th of November the King performs a ceremony that where he releases hundreds of – pigeons. Is it me or is there a lack of majesty to pigeons?! Couldn’t they at least run to doves?! According to Kom, the pigeons fly straight back to the palace and crap all over it 😂 Nothing about this ceremony sounds very celebratory to me!

Whilst trundling around in this invalids chair was utterly shame inducing, it was a great vantage point for people watching (behind my sunglasses so they couldn’t see my shame!) We whizzed through random areas of the city, streets completely full of pet shops with animals and birds in tiny cases, a road just filled with pharmacies, straight though the middle of a street food market with the smell and smoke of grilled meats filling the air.

We stopped at the Central Market and got out for a whistlestop look around, so many things to see!

Kom bought a few things for us to try – mangosteen and jackfruit like I’d had on the cycle tour yesterday and then some coconut sweet things that I had to immediately spit into a tissue – they were gelatinous and oozy, awful! I was in the minority though, most of the group loved them and went back for more.

I bought a cold perfumed coconut which they machete a hole in the top and pop a straw in for you to drink the water inside – apparently perfumed coconut has a slightly different taste but I couldn’t spot it. I passed it all around the group to try, everyone is up for trying anything and it’s a very much share the same straw, eat with your hands kind of group which I love, they get stuck right in. I couldn’t finish the coconut even after the help as it seemed to have a resovoir inside it, so gave it to Luigi to finish which he happily did until he realised it was then his responsibility to dispose of the heavy and drippy coconut shell! Haha, sucker!

We walked further through the market which was designed by a French architect in a way to promote air flow apparently, pre air conditioning. The central room is completely round with a huge domed ceiling and filled with the sparkliest gold jewellery for sale, complete with a rainbow of gemstones as far as you could see. Super blingy! Then onto the flower section – I found out that you never buy lotus flowers for people, they are only used as offerings to the gods. And the white ones signify death so definitely don’t go giving those as a gift!

Back in the bath chairs for a quick whizz through the enormously wide streets, fighting for space with the thousands of cars, mopeds and tuk tuks that are all in a a tearing hurry to get to their destinations, past a group of guys valeting cars right on the pavement and to our next stop, Wat Phonm. This is a temple based at the very centre of the city. Apparently in the 1300’s a woman found a log in the river with 5 religious statues in it. Seeing this as a sign from the gods she assigned the villagers to build an artificial hill and a temple on top of the hill to house the statues.

Her persuasion skills were pretty strong weren’t they?! Hey lads I’ve found some Gods in this stick, could you knock me up a hill and whack a temple on top for me while you’re at it. She must have been quite a woman!

We had 15 minutes here to wander around and take photos. Inside the temple itself were 5 guys sitting cross legged on the floor playing traditional music – not quite sure if they were the official band or they’d just wandered in and started jamming – and the air was thick with incense.

Outside in the grounds at the front, and I can’t tell you how happy I was about this, was the rabbit sculpture I thought I’d hallucinated! Apparently it’s the year of the rabbit and so this huge bamboo sculpture stands out of the front of the Wat, each year it gets changed to that year’s animal. While the rabbit wasn’t wearing glasses like I thought, it does have rings around its eyes as you can see in the pictures so I was almost right!

When I first met the group, we went through the schedule and talked about all of the optional activities for the rest of the trip. I announced I wanted to do absolutely everything except anything involving a bicycle and the trip to the bat cave – I hate bats. Well, as we left the temple everyone started screaming my name from their bath chairs, I looked up into the most enormous tree with literally hundreds and hundreds of bats hanging from it. It was horrific, the stuff of nightmares! I didn’t take a picture as I was frozen in place 😂

We finished the tour, there was a communal tip from our tipping kitty for all the drivers but I slipped mine a few extra quid as I felt so bad about the whole thing, then we walked down to the river front to get on our private boat for a sunset cruise! Everyone was out on the riverside, card games were going on all along the way and people were just sitting chatting and enjoying the afternoon – including some unlikely friends – see pic below, what’s the story there I wonder? The monks never cease to surprise.

The steps down to the jetty were super steep, crumbling away and had no handrail. All of the rest made their way down but I was going so slow Kom came and offered his arm which was very lovely and gentlemanly of him until he tripped and almost took us both into the river! It’s the thought that counts though isn’t it 😂

We sat on the top deck of our boat, drinking beers and cocktails (or cans of ginger ale and sprite if you were me!), eating sweet and salty peanuts with dried lime leaves and some dried banana slices, drifting along the Mekong with eighties guitar bangers belting out of the sound system. We went through the back catalogue of Dire Straits, the Eagles, Rod Stewart and many more. The Mekong isn’t the most beautiful river in daylight, it’s very murky, but as the sun set and all the city lights came on it was beautiful. I took so many pictures – as you can see in the pictures of me taking pictures!

Most of the others headed to a restaurant after we docked but I felt like we’d spent a lot of the day sitting down so Juliet, Kate (my age, German, vet) and I decided to have a wander around the night market. It was mainly fake designer clothes and a few food stalls, plus the normal families just sitting cooking and eating their dinner.

Juliet got some fried prawns (very brave, they were sitting out unrefrigerated at the front of the stall. They deep fried them in front of her but I still think it was brave!) and then we decided to walk the 3km back to the hotel. I wouldn’t have done it alone but it was really fun to do as a group. We passed through neighbourhoods full of food stalls very much for locals – chicken feet anyone?! Actually I feel fine turning my nose up at those as I have in fact tried them in the past and can confirm they are as bad as you would imagine! We passed a shop selling only car seats, still open at 8.30 at night, with 3 young lads sitting in a circle on the floor, rice cooker and various bowls of curries, vegetables etc in the middle. Casually having their dinner. Can you imagine that in the middle of Halfords 😂.

Everywhere you looked families and groups of friends were just sitting out on the street, eating and talking. So interesting. On one corner they were selling the biggest pile of cudddly toys ever and people were queuing up for them – at almost 9 o’clock at night. Fascinating.

We also walked though what was – if not the red light district then at least the strip club district. All of the girls in their little dresses were outside the clubs but they were sitting about and eating big bowls of food and chatting, there was not a whole lot of mystique involved! There were a lot of white men of a certain age hanging about too…we were very much judging them!

It was so sticky and humid I felt gross when I got back so had a lovely shower and realised I’d only really eaten half a salad all day (plus a lot of sugary drinks to be fair) so I took my wet haired, bare faced self down to the tiny restaurant by the pool in the hotel and had a glass noodle salad with seafood. It was delicious but even though I had asked for ‘only a little spice’ it was pretty burny! Back to the room for a good debrief of the day with Kerry and asleep by 11.

Tomorrow we head to Kampong Cham – that’s the extent of what I know about it except I need to be packed and ready to go by 10am so I’ll update you all about it later!

Lots and lots of love always xxx